Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, and David Crosby join Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss the 50-year anniversary of 'Déjà Vu’ and the recently released deluxe edition of the seminal album. They share wide-ranging stories about the making of the album and how the group formed, how “Our House” came to be, the demo version of the song featuring Joni Mitchell, Neil Young joining the band and the challenges of working with him, the danger of hard drugs, the magic of the group and much more.
Graham Nash Tells Apple Music The Story of How “Our House” Came To Be…
I was having breakfast at Art's Deli on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles with Joni one morning. It was select spring of 69. We had finished breakfast and we were walking back to Jon's car. It was a miserable day, it was raining and cold and like foggy kind of thing. But on the way to the car, we passed an antique store. And of course, we're curious as to what lovely things are in an antique store. So Joni and I were looking in the window and she saw a vase that she wanted to buy, maybe 10 inches high, some hand-painted flowers around the edge. About yay high. And so Joni bought it.And so, as I said, it was a miserable day. We got got in Jon's car and drove down to our house in Laurel Canyon. And we got to the front door of Jon's house. And I said, "Hey, Jon, why don't I light a fire? And you put some flowers in that vase that you just bought today." Well, I'm a writer and therefore I was halfway through a new song. And Jon went out into the garden to pick a few kind of spring, early flowers, so she wasn't at her piano. That means that I was. And "Our House" was written in about an hour and a half. I'm the same as you, I see beauty everywhere. I'm a very curious person. I love being alive and I love these ordinary moments. And that's what that was. That was an ordinary moment that I turned into a song that has touched people's hearts for over 30 years. And as a songwriter, that's incredible. That's just incredible. So when people call me from all over the world and say, they heard "Our House" on the radio in Italy or in Katmandu in Nepal, it's a thrill as a writer to get messages like that.
Graham Nash Tells Apple Music About The “Our House” Demo Recorded With His Then Girlfriend Joni Mitchell...
You're talking about the version of "Our House" with me and Joni playing four hands on one piano, right? And her thinking with me. And we make a mistake in the middle of it. And I say, "Oh, (beep)." I mean, I swear on the thing. So the thing is that normally you would never put out something like that. You would put out the real record of it. With the 51 years that people have loved this album, I thought that we need to put something on there that they would never expect. And normally I would never put that out. It was a personal thing between Jon and I, but I really wanted to share it because it is a very interesting moment, particularly because of that song, which I wrote for her. So it was a moment that I'll never forget. I still remember her sitting next to me playing that song. It was thrilling for me. I mean, I'm a huge Joni Mitchell fan. Who the hell isn't, that knows anything about music. I mean, yes, we were living together. We were boyfriend and girlfriend. Yes. I know all that, but it's still Joni Mitchell. It's not just my girlfriend or her boyfriend. It's Jon for God's sake. One of the genius of music.
Graham Nash and Stephen Stills Tell Apple Music The Story of How Crosby, Stills, and Nash Formed Thanks To A Three-Part Harmony in Joni Mitchell’s Company...
I've known David Crosby for a couple of years by that time. He was in England with The Byrds and they were getting trashed in the press because somebody had said that they were America's Beatles. And of course, that doesn't sit very well with English people. Crosby said to me, one day he said, "Peter talks having a party up on his house on Long Holland, do you want to come? I want to introduce you to somebody." And I said, "David, fine. Sure. I was just there, what?" He said, "Come on up. We're going up.” So we went up to Peter Topps' house. We knocked on the front door and the door opened and this incredible cloud of smoke came out of the living room. And there was this music going on. This like Brazilian kind of hard-edged great groove on the piano. And I walked over to this kid and looked at him, playing the piano and Crosby nudged me. He said, "That's who I want you to meet. That's Stephen Stills." That's the first day I met Stephen. He was playing great piano. He had great music in his pool and I knew it. And later on I had left London to be with Jon for about three days. And I pulled up in front of her house in Laurel Canyon, in a cab, in a yellow taxi. And I heard other people's voices. And I thought, "Wow, I just want me to spend some time with Jon, but there's other voices?" So I knocked on the door and she opened the door and it was David and Stephen. They were having dinner with Jon. And we got through dinner. I must confess we smoked a big one.
And David said to Stephen, "Hey, Stephen, play Willie that song." And they had been trying to get a duo act together. The Buffalo Springfield had broken up. David had been thrown out of The Byrds. They wanted to get a little two-part harmony, kind of Everly Brothers kind of thing, going. And so they sang a song to Stephen. It was called, You Don't have to Cry, which ended up on the first record. They got to the end of it. And I looked at Stephen and I said, "That's an incredible song, Stephen. That's really a beautiful song. Do me a favor and sing it one more time." And they looked at each other and shrugged, and they sang it one more time. They got to the end of it. And I said, "Okay, all right, I'm English. Forget it. Do it one more time, please. One more time.” In those three playings of that song, I had learned my harmony. I'd learned the words. I learned, how Crosby was breathing. I learned Stephen's body language about when he was going to start a line or end a line or put emphasis on particular words. When we sang that third time, my life changed. And so did David's and so did Stephen's and so did Joni's. We stopped laughing and we stopped the song and started laughing after about honestly less than a minute of the song. In three part harmony making our three voices into one voice and it blew us all away. I realized that we'd have to go home to England and leave The Hollies, which was a rather successful band. Leave my equipment, leave my money. I had to go and follow this out. And Joni was the only witness to the very first time CSN ever created music together.
Stephen Stills: That's all true except the locale, it's actually at Cass's house the day before. And Cass was the only witness. I wouldn't have sung in front of Joni Mitchell if you paid me a million dollars, cold like that. That I can assure you. That, I can assure you. That's one. But I have to smell a phonic memory of it, it's so vivid. And so we're constantly having this odd road about where did we sing first? And I went to Joni’s the next day with Elliot, and that's when we were all at the dining room at the kitchen table with the ladder back chairs, but the day before, we'd been at Cass's and I found this really wonderful little corner at her dining room table that had stucco walls behind it, and so when Graham joined in, it was like a mushrooms cloud going off. It was wonderful.
Graham Nash Tells Apple Music About Neil Young Joining The Band…
The addition of Neil made it a completely different band, Crosby, Stills & Nash is any different band than Crosby Stills, Nash & Young. It was Neil Young, David and Stephen were having dinner in New York with Ahmet Ertegun who was the CEO of Atlantic Records, a dear friend. And halfway through dinner they were talking with Ahmet that we just finished the record. And we realized that it was probably going to be a hit. And therefore we realized that we probably would have to go on the road. But we had a problem. And the problem was a good one, but it was this. Stephen Stills played most of the instruments on the first Crosby, Stills & Nash record. So when we're going to go out on the road, what the hell do we do when one of the members played most of the instruments? We have to find someone else, right? So that dinner that David and Stephen were having with Ahmet, Ahmet said in the middle of dinner, he says, "I know who you should get." And so Stephen said, "Wow, really, Ahmet, who should we get?" And he said, "You got to get Neil back." Now, Stephen is going crazy because he had just gone through a couple of years of madness with Neil not turning up and quitting the band and maybe quitting the band and maybe wanting to do The Ed Sullivan Show, but not turned up. It was madness. And we thought that Ahmet was crazy, but it really made sense. But we had another problem and that was that I'd never met Neil. And so I said to the boys, "Look, before we invite Neil to join this band, I have to meet him. I don't know whether I can tell him the secret. I don't know whether he can be my friend. I know he's great, but I've never met him. I have to meet him before I can invite him with a good heart into this band." I had breakfast with Neil on Bleecker Street here in The Village, in New York. And after that breakfast, I would have given him the world. He was funny. He was self-deprecating. He was very confident. At the end of the breakfast I said, "Look, Neil, tell me one reason why we should invite you into this band?" And he looked at me and he said, "Have you ever heard me and Stephen play guitar together?"I said, "I have." He said, "That's why you want me in this band." And he was right.
Graham Nash Tells Apple Music About The Challenges of Working With Neil Young…
One of the things that we found out very quickly was just who Neil wanted to be as a person. Neil Young is a brilliant musician obviously. And one of the things that makes him such a brilliant musician is that he physically reacts to the muse of music. And when it's going great, he's right there, 100%. When it's not going great, he's going to turn left on the freeway where everybody else turns right, which happened with the Stills-Young album. They were on tour as the Stills-Young band, and Neil turns left and Stephen turned right, and they never made another piece of music on that tour. So we started to find out who Neil was. He would take his songs and he would take them to his studio and he would mix them and stuff and then bring them back and have us put our voices on and stuff. And he never played a note of music on "Our House" or on Teach Children.So it was a very difficult album to do. We didn't become a band like Crosby, Stills & Nash was. We became something else, and it was painful. I remember at one point when I would do a mix of say, Carry On that I loved and everybody loved in the studio when we mixed it, that's the mix, fantastic, we'd go home, we would sleep, we'd come back the next day, and the mix was completely redone.Mixes sometimes take hours and hours to prep. So when you've put all your effort into that, and you've got something that you really love, and you come back the next day and it's completely different, it doesn't make for a great feeling. And at one point I looked at Stephen and David and Neil, and we were in the studio pop, and I said, "Look, we're blowing this. We're just blowing this. This is not... Come on." And I started to cry. And that's the only time that I've ever cried when I was making music. That time was very emotionally distressing for me, because I want the song done. Do you want to do all these songs and make a great album? I'm there, come on, let's go. And I won't quit until it's done, but it was emotionally destroying.
Stephen Stills Tells Apple Music About 'Déjà Vu’...
… To me, the beauty of the finished product, of all the songs there’s not a dog in the bunch, and it's just really, really fabulous, and gave everybody... Shows their genius, David's genius and Graham's genius, and Neil's. And I'm pottering along in the back trying to keep up.
Stephen Stills Tells Apple Music About The Group’s Dissolution...
If we were to have kept the circle in violet. I mean, really... Just we imploded instead of exploded and really drawn from each other. If we'd kept that going we'd have been far more comfortable. And as it was, Graham and I put a brave face on it for the longest time and then eventually I became irritating, everything became irritating. Plus at that time I was recording all over the place, doing something for a solo, and something for this. And so that's why there's a couple of songs on there that were actually intended for solo album. So no harm, no foul.
David Crosby Tells Apple Music Why Bands Are Like Marriages…
Well, bands are like that, man. Bands are like marriages. People don't go in parallel lines, right? They're always either converging or diverging. Bands are like a marriage. You get into it, you're very excited. You're thrilled with each other's music. You really love the process. You're having a blast. But after you've been with somebody for 40 years, you rub them the wrong way. They rub you the wrong way. There's lots of gripes. It happens in every single relationship I've ever seen, every band that I've ever seen. So I'm not surprised it went that way. I'm all cool with it. We did some really good work.
David Crosby Tells Apple Music About Neil Young’s Songwriting Abilities…
In a bottom line, man, that band is all about songs. The reason we wanted Neil in the band was not his guitar playing, not his singing, not that he was nice or anything. It was those songs. He writes really good songs. And Stills, who is the best of us, without any question, best songwriter, best guitar player, best singer, loved his songs. And so did I. When we were trying to figure out if we wanted him in the band or not, Graham didn't want him in the band, Stephen did, and it was up to me and he sat down and sang me those songs, man, I heard Helpless. I said, I want this guy in the band. It was very difficult, but we did it. We were pretty honest with each other. We would listen to each other's songs and a song would either move you or it wouldn't. Neil sang us Helpless, we knew what to do. It was a wonderful song. Stills, man, you can't mistake it. He comes with Carry On and you just go, "Oh, sh-t, I'm glad I'm in a band with this guy.”
David Crosby Tells Apple Music About The Genius of Stephen Stills…
You know, more time passes... I'm glad I'm in a band with this guy. The more time passes and the more distant all of that is from me, the more I love Stephen Stills, man that guy just kicks ass. He grew up with a literal musical genius inside him, but it was all difficult for him, because that's the kind of person he is. Us loving his music was one of the main affirmations in his life, because we did it so completely and so thoroughly, and we proved it, we didn't just talk it. We worked on it. That was probably one of the first times in his life that there was a clean affirmation of what he could do by other people. And I'm absolutely proud that we did it because he deserved it, man. The guy, wow, is he good
David Crosby Tells Apple Music What Makes The Band Great…
My role is a spark plug and court jester. Fiery, inventive, goofy, certainly not grown up. I have never been accused of being a grownup. But I brought a very strange chord sense from liking jazz. And I brought a, as did we all, a completely different flavor of songs. That's why the CSNY was so strong at making records man, because we had four good writers and all of us write completely different from each other. That makes a good record.
David Crosby Tells Apple Music About Playing With Neil Young…
Neil's an interesting guy, but he's driven by the same things we are. He loves song. He loves music. He loves to sing and play. That part, there's no complexity, there's no tricks, there's no weirdness at all. He is a musician. He loves it. As son as his fingers touched the guitar strings, we were talking to each other really well. The chemistry in that band, when we were playing was excellent. We were listening to each other and we could spark each other easily. I could go over to Neil, man, in the middle of a tune and make three hits on back beats at the right time and straighten Neil up like I'd put a rod of fire up his butt. I could get his attention heavily by doing the right thing at the right time. And he could do the exact same thing.I'd be in the middle of singing a phrase and he'd crown out over it with the lead guitar right in front of me laughing. And it would be a moment, we would both wind up laughing in the middle of the song because we had just really, really screwed it down tight. And that's where the relationship was. It wasn't social. When we went on tour man, he didn't ride in the bus with us. He had his own drivers, own scene. He didn't even hang out with us. It's tough for some people, you want other people to be like you, and he's not. I was fine with it. I wanted him to be happy because when he's happy, he makes really good music.
David Crosby Tells Apple Music About The Danger of Hard Drugs…
The problem is the money. When you have a lot of money and you're young, you're foolish, you're stupid, you do a lot of dumb things with your money. We all did a lot of drugs. And that was a stupid thing to do. Some drugs are really relatively innocent. If we'd stuck with pot, we would have been okay. The other stuff, it destroys you. And it did us just like it does everybody. We like getting high, human beings always have. That's why we learned how to distill, how we learned how to make wine, how to brew beer. We invented all that stuff because we like it. That's why we ate every nut and berry in the jungle to see which one would get us loopy. And whenever we found one that did, we ate it repeatedly. It became a sacrament in our local religion, whatever. Human beings always have. Some stuff will destroy you. Opiates will destroy you. Cocaine will destroy you. Speed will destroy you. Those are hard drugs and they will kill you.
